AEM Forms portal components overview

In a typical forms-centric portal deployment scenario, forms development and portal development are two disjoint activities. While Form Designers design and store forms in a repository, Web Developers create a web application to list forms and handle submission of forms. Forms are copied over to the web tier as there is no communication between the forms repository and the web application.

Such scenarios often result in management issues and production delays. For example, if there is a newer version of a form available in the repository, you need to replace the form on the web tier, modify the web application, and redeploy the form on the public site. Redeploying the web application might cause some server downtime. Typically, the server downtime is a planned activity and therefore the changes cannot be pushed to the public site instantaneously.

The form portal components allow you to add the following functionality:

List forms in customized layouts. Out of the box, List view, Card view, and Panel view layouts are provided. You can create your own custom layouts.

Enables you to display custom metadata as well as custom actions while listing them.

List forms published by AEM Forms UI on the publish instance where Forms Portal components are being used.

Allow end users to render forms in HTML as well as PDF format.

Use custom HTML profile to render forms.

Enable searching of forms based on a various criteria, such as form properties, metadata, and tags.

Submit form data to a servlet.

Use custom CSS to customize the look and feel of the portal.

Create links to forms.

Lists drafts and submissions related to Adaptive Form created by end user.

Available AEM Forms portal components

AEM Forms provides the following portal components out of the box, grouped under Document Servicesand Document Services Predicates component groups:

Search & Lister

The Search & Lister component allows you to list forms from the forms repository onto your portal page and provides configuration options to list forms based on specified criteria. It also allows you to specify search criteria to enable your portal users to search across the list of forms.

Drafts & Submissions

While Search & Lister component displays forms which are made public by Forms author, the Drafts & Submissions component displays forms that are saved as draft for completing later and submitted forms. This component provides personalized experience to any logged in user.

Link

The Link component allows you to create a link to a form anywhere on the page. Consider a scenario where you are offering a training program, and you want your users to submit a form to register for the training. On your website, you have posted the program details. Below the details, you want to provide a link to the registration form. The Link component can help you create that link.